Metro Vancouver communities vie for waste-to-energy incinerator

A truckload of solid waste approaches a waste to energy facility in south Burnaby.

Photograph by: Ian Lindsay
, Vancouver Sun files

Some Metro Vancouver directors who are lobbying to get an incinerator in their city criticized a staff report Thursday for giving out-of-region communities a "leg up" in the competition.

Surrey Coun. Marvin Hunt said the report, which recommended encouraging proponents who had both a site and location ready for a waste-to-energy facility, would give communities such as Gold River, Elk Valley and Powell River an edge over those in Metro Vancouver because they've had three years or more to develop their proposals.

Surrey, New Westminster, Burnaby and the Tsawwassen First Nation have all expressed an interest in possibly hosting such a facility but no work has been done. Waste-to-energy refers to everything from mass burn to gasification and anaerobic digestion.

Hunt, who said he would like to see a waste facility in Surrey city centre, said it could heat and power sections of the city as well as produce biofuels. Any profits, he said, could be used to fund transit projects to reduce air pollution.

"There are so many benefits that could come to the entire region," Hunt told Metro's Zero Waste Committee Thursday. "I personally am not interested in having it in Burns Bog or Fraser Bend but we want it close to our town centre. And I'm not the only one; I've heard this from other municipalities as well."

Hunt urged the committee to amend the recommendation, saying that focusing on proponents who have a site — and not on technology options — would lead to corporations pitching industrial land for the facility, similar to what happened in Surrey's Campbell Heights last year.

"This is just encouraging companies to find a piece of land or put an option on it, which happened in Surrey," he said. "That doesn't encourage them to work with municipalities to find the best benefits to the region."

Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan agreed the request for proposals should be broadened so that more proponents, including municipalities, may come forward, which would allow Metro to compare the relative costs of having it in or out of the region.

He noted cities around the world, including Paris, are using incinerators to burn their waste, yet Metro Vancouver is afraid to come out with a direction on whether the facility should be in or out of the region, or what technology to pursue.

He criticized the staff report as a "dog's breakfast" that is vague on details and would lead to higher costs as a result of the risks and uncertainty.

The waste-to-energy facility, which was approved in Metro's solid waste management plan, was expected to have a capacity of 500,000 tonnes per year and to use mass burn technology. But staff is now suggesting all technologies be examined and that the facility be built to accommodate 250,000 to 400,000 tonnes of garbage per year because the amount of trash being dumped has been steadily decreasing.

The drop has been credited to higher tipping fees — the amount paid to the facility where the garbage is dumped — which has climbed from $65 per metric tonne in 2006 to $107 per metric tonne today.

Paul Henderson, manager of Metro's solid waste department, said it appears demolition waste is also going to private companies run by Metro Vancouver, where it is being recycled. He said an analysis is being done to determine what has happened to the garbage, and projections for the future.

Corrigan said he suspects the demolition waste is being trucked to less-expensive dumps, and said he's concerned that with another million people moving into the region by 2030, the capacity won't be large enough to accommodate the growth.

He noted the Burnaby incinerator has been operating successfully for 25 years and he would consider having another incinerator as long as the garbage was barged in, so it wouldn't increase traffic on the roads.

"If it's worked for 25 years why not do it again?" he asked.

The Zero Waste Committee agreed to amend the recommendation by opening the request for proposals to allow proponents to include a site or sites, as well as technology solutions. The committee also agreed to allow owners of potential sites to identify themselves as potential spots for an incinerator.

The request for proposals is expected to be released this summer, with a shortlist of proponents compiled by the end of this year. Consultations will start now with the Fraser Valley Regional District, which has raised several concerns about an in-region incinerator, fearing it will send pollutants and toxins into the valley and raise potential health concerns.

Metro Vancouver last year processed one million tonnes of garbage. The region's zero-waste strategy aims to reduce the amount of garbage being sent to the landfill by 70 per cent by 2015 and 80 per cent by 2020 through recycling and organics composting. What can't be recycled or reused would go to a waste-to-energy facility.

Henderson noted that since Metro Vancouver banned mattresses from landfills last January, 60,000 have been recycled.

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